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World Heritage Committee considers Tas forest

ASHLEY HALL: A huge swathe of forests protected under Tasmania's peace deal are up for world heritage nomination this weekend.

The World Heritage Committee is starting a two week long meeting in Cambodia on Sunday.

Among the agenda items is whether to add another 170,000 hectares to the Tasmanian World Heritage area.

Environmentalists have their fingers crossed but the Aboriginal community wants the nomination deferred.

Felicity Ogilvie reports from Hobart.

FELICITY OGILVIE: It's a moment the Australian Greens Leader Christine Milne has spent decades fighting for. She's hopes Tasmania's World Heritage area will be extended at the UNESCO meeting in Cambodia.

CHRISTINE MILNE: The inclusion of these high conservation value forests with absolute world heritage values has been something that I've been campaigning for since 1989. They should have gone into the expansion of the world heritage area back then.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The disputed forests are being protected as part of the forest peace deal.

Vica Bayley from the Wilderness Society is one of the key negotiators.

VICA BAYLEY: Some of these forests are the tallest hardwood trees on the planet. They extend as a contiguous band all the way from the far south at Cockle Creek up into the central highlands and the upper Derwent and then around to the Great Western Tiers. So these are areas of outstanding natural values.

FELICITY OGILVIE: If the World Heritage Committee rejects the nomination for any reason or delays it, what affect will that have on the forest agreement?

VICA BAYLEY: That would be yet to play out but it would, I would imagine, seriously destabilise things with federal politics the way they are at the moment.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Federal Opposition has written to the World Heritage Committee saying they are against the nomination.

And that's not the only hitch.

A key adviser to the World Heritage Committee wants the members to refer the nomination back to the Australian Government. The reason is they want the Government to do more consultation with the Aboriginal community about the cultural values of the land.

The Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke says a comprehensive response has been made, which he expects will satisfy every objection.

Michael Mansell from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community says he has met the Minister to discuss the nomination.

MICHAEL MANSELL: No one could claim that an Aboriginal delegation being rushed in and rushed out of the Minister's office for 15 minutes constitutes genuine consultation. And so our view is that the, it is not appropriate at this stage in time for the proposal to go forward to the world committee. It should be deferred.

FELICITY OGILVIE: What are the Aboriginal cultural values and special sites in this area?

MICHAEL MANSELL: Well up, yeah, up around the Great Lakes and Arthurs Lakes, up around the Western Tiers area, were many Aboriginal villages where Aboriginal people were hunted out, shot on site. Some of those hollow trees in that area were the burial grounds of Aboriginal people because the ground was so hard that the bodies were placed in the hollow trees.

The famous Aboriginal walking tracks that the tribes used, from as far down as the Styx Valley right up to the Great Western Tiers and beyond, are still in that region and these are very sensitive spiritual areas to Aboriginal people.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Mr Mansell does want the World Heritage area extended but he says Aboriginal people should manage it rather than the Tasmanian Parks Service.

The decision by the World Heritage Committee could be made as early as Sunday or as late as Thursday the 27th June.